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The day the terror bombs struck London I was with my 30-something British friend Tim. Born near Belfast, he now lives in London. "We can take it," he said. "We're more used to this sort of thing, you know," he added. We've had the Troubles [that is, the IRA terror bombings] and, of course, we managed through the Blitz." Fifty thousand Brits died in the Blitz — 17 times our 9/11 losses. Hundreds died in the IRA terror attacks. And now more have been killed by al Qaeda.

But London can take it. There was no evidence of panic in the British capital in the aftermath of the attacks and even tube ridership seems to be recovering. There is little that this city, more than 1,000 years old, hasn't seen and can't handle.

But how about the United States in general and New York in particular? If al Qaeda switches from its obsession with high-profile large attacks and goes after soft targets here, can we handle it?

At one extreme, of course, is the 9/11 apocalypse, which triggered a two-year recession, a permanent global drop in American tourism and massive changes in our outlook and body politic. These reactions were perfectly normal given the size of the conflagration and its implications for our daily lives.

But at the other extreme was the sniper who took a dozen lives in the D.C. area and traumatized the capital for a month. People were afraid to go to convenience stores or to buy gas. Everybody was looking over his shoulder. All this thanks to two deranged people — a man and a boy — with a rifle and a telescopic sight.

If terrorists go after soft American targets, it will be almost impossible to stop them. They need only to get lucky once, while those who defend against them can afford no mistakes.

The terrorists would obviously have rather attacked big targets like the Tower of London, offices in the city, Westminster or London Bridge. But they couldn't because security was too tight, so they hit soft targets.

How should we react if al Qaeda adopts the same strategy here?

The American reaction to hostages provides a good case in point. When militants seized a few dozen hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, it dominated our media, paralyzed the country and brought down a president. Concern for a few hostages in 1986 led to the Iran-Contra affair, which ruined President Reagan's second term.

But today, we take hostage crises in stride. We refuse to negotiate with the terrorists. We are concerned, even outraged, but we put the matter in the same kind of perspective Londoners have been able to put terror attacks — they adjust, they work hard to stop them, but, in the last analysis, they move on.

If the American people — led by New Yorkers — handle terror attacks against soft targets with the same kind of wisdom that the British people — led by Londoners — have, we will go a long, long way toward defeating terrorism.

Terrorism only works if it can terrorize. Ultimately, then, the ability to stop them from achieving this goal rests with each of us. It is our reaction, not our deaths, that the terrorists really seek. If hostage taking fails to send us into a national tizzy, it tends to abate. If terror bombings outrage us and rekindle our determination but do not send us into haunting, personal fear, they will fail and, ultimately likely peter out.

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